Julius Streicher

Name	Julius Streicher
Caption	Julius Streicher as a defendant before the International Military Tribunal.
Order	Gauleiter of Franconia
Term start	1929
Term end	February 16, 1940
Leader	Adolf Hitler
Predecessor	None
Successor	Hans Zimmermann(Acting, 1940)Karl Holz(acting from 1942, permanent from 1944)
Birth date	February 12, 1885
Birth place	Fleinhausen, then Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire
Death date	October 16, 1946
Death place	Nuremberg, American Occupied Zone, German Realm
Party	National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP)
Spouse	Kunigunde Roth (m. 1913, died 1943)Adele Tappe (m. 1945)
Children	2
Profession	Teacher, publisher, activist

Julius Streicher (12 February 1885 – 16 October 1946) was a prominent Nazi prior to World War II. He was the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer newspaper, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine. His publishing firm also released three anti-Semitic books for children, including the 1938 Der Giftpilz ("The Toadstool" or "The Poison-Mushroom"), one of the most widespread pieces of propaganda, which purported to warn about insidious dangers Jews posed by using the metaphor of an attractive yet deadly mushroom. After the war, he was convicted of crimes against humanity and executed.

Early life

Streicher was born in Fleinhausen, Kingdom of Bavaria, one of nine children of the teacher Friedrich Streicher and his wife Anna (née Weiss). He worked as an elementary school teacher like his father, and in 1909 he began his political career, joining the German Democratic Party. He would later claim that because his political work brought him into contact with German Jews, he “must therefore have been fated to become later on a writer and speaker on racial politics.” In 1913 Streicher married Kunigunde Roth, a baker's daughter, in Nuremberg. They had two sons, Lothar (born 1915) and Elmar (born 1918).

Streicher joined the German Army in 1914. He won the Iron Cross and reached the rank of lieutenant by the time the Armistice was signed in November, 1918.

Early politics

In 1919 Streicher became active in the anti-Semitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund (German Nationalist Protection and Defense Federation), one of the various radical-nationalist organizations that sprang up in the wake of the failed German Communist revolution of 1918. Such groups fostered the view that Jews had conspired with “Bolshevik” traitors in trying to subject Germany to Communist rule. In 1920 he turned to the Deutschsozialistische Partei (German-Socialist Party), a group whose platform was close to that of the young NSDAP, or National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (National Socialist German Worker's Party). Streicher sought to move the German-Socialists in a more virulently anti-Semitic direction – an effort which aroused enough opposition that he left the group and brought his now-substantial following to yet another organization in 1921, the Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft (German Working Community), which hoped to unite the various anti-Semitic Völkisch movements.

National Socialism

In 1921, Streicher finally found his mentor. He visited Munich in order to hear Adolf Hitler speak, an experience that he later said left him transformed: Soon after, Streicher joined the Nazi Party and merged his personal following with Hitler’s, almost doubling the party membership.

In May 1923 Streicher founded the newspaper, Der Stürmer (The Stormer, or, loosely, The Attacker). From the outset, the chief aim of the paper was to promulgate anti-Semitic propaganda. “We will be slaves of the Jew,” the paper announced. “Therefore he must go.”

In November of that year, Streicher participated in Hitler’s first effort to seize power, the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. Streicher marched with Hitler in the front row of the would-be revolutionaries and braved the bullets of the Munich police. His loyalty earned him Hitler’s lifelong trust and protection; in the years that followed, Streicher would be one of the dictator’s few true intimates.

As a reward for his dedication, when the Nazi Party was legalized again and re-organized in 1925 Streicher was appointed Gauleiter of the Bavarian region of Franconia (which included his home town of Nuremberg). In the early years of the party’s rise, Gauleiter were essentially party functionaries without real power; but in the final years of the Weimar Republic, they became paramilitary commanders. During the 12 years of the Nazi regime itself, party Gauleiter like Streicher would wield immense power, and be in large measure untouchable by legal authority.

Streicher was also elected to the Bavarian "Landtag" or legislature, a position which gave him a margin of parliamentary immunity — a safety net that would help him resist efforts to silence his racist message.

The rise of Der Stürmer

Beginning in 1924, Streicher used Der Stürmer as a mouthpiece not only for general antisemitic attacks, but for calculated smear campaigns against specific Jews, such as the Nuremberg city official Julius Fleischmann, who worked for Streicher’s nemesis, mayor Hermann Luppe. Der Stürmer accused Fleischmann of stealing socks from his quartermaster during combat in World War I. Fleischmann sued Streicher and successfully disproved the allegations in court (Streicher was fined 900 marks), but the detailed testimony exposed other less-than-glorious details of Fleischmann’s record, and his reputation was badly damaged anyway. It was proof that Streicher’s unofficial motto for his tactics was grimly correct: "Something always sticks."

To protect himself from accountability, Streicher relied on Hitler’s protection. Hitler declared that Der Stürmer was his favourite newspaper, and saw to it that each weekly issue was posted for public reading in special glassed-in display cases known as "Stürmerkasten". The newspaper reached a peak circulation of 600,000 in 1935.

Streicher later claimed that he was only “indirectly responsible” for passage of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and that he felt slighted because he was not directly consulted.

In 1938, Streicher ordered the Great Synagogue of Nuremberg destroyed; he later claimed that his decision was based on his disapproval of its architectural design.

Fall from power

Streicher’s excesses brought condemnation even from other Nazis. Streicher’s behaviour was viewed as so irresponsible that he alienated much of the party leadership; chief among his enemies in Hitler’s hierarchy was Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, who loathed him and later claimed that he forbade his own staff to read Der Stürmer.

In spite of his special relationship with Hitler, after 1938 Streicher’s position began to unravel. He was accused of keeping Jewish property seized after Kristallnacht in November 1938; he was charged with spreading untrue stories about Göring – such as alleging that his daughter Edda was conceived by artificial insemination, and he was confronted with his excessive personal behaviour, including unconcealed adultery, several furious verbal attacks on other Gauleiters and striding through the streets of Nuremberg cracking a bullwhip (this last is portrayed in the 1944 Hollywood film The Hitler Gang). In February 1940 he was stripped of his party offices and withdrew from the public eye, although he was permitted to continue publishing Der Stürmer. Streicher also remained on good terms with Hitler.

Streicher's wife, Kunigunde Streicher, died in 1943 after 30 years of marriage.

When Germany surrendered to the Allied armies in May 1945, Streicher said later, he decided to commit suicide. Instead, he married his former secretary, Adele Tappe. Days later, on May 23, 1945, Streicher was captured in the town of Waidring, Austria, by a group of American officers led by Major Henry Plitt – who was Jewish. At first Streicher claimed to be a painter named “Joseph Sailer,” but after a few questions, quickly admitted to his true identity.

During his trial, Streicher claimed that he had been mistreated by Allied soldiers after his capture. By his account they ordered him to take off his clothes in his cell, burned him with cigarettes and made to extinguish them with his bare feet, allowed him to drink only water from a toilet, made him kiss the feet of Negro soldiers and beat him with a bullwhip. He further claimed that some of the soldiers also spat at him and forced his mouth open to spit in it.

==Trial and execution== sentencing]] Julius Streicher was not a member of the military and did not take part in planning the Holocaust, or the invasion of other nations. Yet his pivotal role in inciting the extermination of Jews was significant enough, in the prosecutors' judgment, to include him in the indictment of Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal – which sat, ironically, in Nuremberg, where Streicher had once been an unchallenged authority. In essence, the prosecutors took the line that Streicher's incendiary speeches and articles made him an accessory to murder, and therefore as culpable as those who actually ordered the mass extermination of Jews (such as Hans Frank and Ernst Kaltenbrunner).

During his trial, Streicher displayed for the last time the flair for courtroom theatrics that had made him famous in the 1920s. He answered questions from his own defence attorney with diatribes against Jews, the Allies, and the court itself, and was frequently silenced by the court officers. Streicher was largely shunned by all of the other Nuremberg defendants. He also peppered his testimony with references to passages of Jewish texts he had so often carefully selected and inserted (invariably out of context) into the pages of Der Stürmer.

Streicher was found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and sentenced to death on October 1, 1946. The judgment against him read, in part:

Streicher was hanged in the early hours of October 16, 1946, along with the nine other condemned defendants from the first Nuremberg trial (Göring, Streicher's nemesis, committed suicide only hours earlier). Streicher's was the most melodramatic of the hangings carried out that night. At the bottom of the scaffold he cried out "Heil Hitler!". When he mounted the platform, he delivered his last sneering reference to Jewish scripture, snapping "Purim-Fest 1946!". The Jewish holiday Purim celebrates the escape by the Jews from extermination at the hands of Haman, an ancient Persian government official. At the end of the Purim story, Haman is hanged, as are his ten sons. Streicher's final declaration before the hood went over his head was, "The Bolsheviks will hang you one day!"

The consensus among eyewitnesses was that Streicher's hanging did not proceed as planned, and that he did not receive the quick death from spinal severing typical of the other executions at Nuremberg. Howard K. Smith, who covered the executions for the International News Service, reported that Streicher "went down kicking" which may have dislodged the hangman's knot from its ideal position. Smith stated that Streicher could be heard groaning under the scaffold after he dropped through the trap-door, and that the executioner intervened under the gallows, which was screened by wood panels and a black curtain, to finish the job. U. S. Army Master Sergeant John C. Woods was the main executioner, and not only insisted he had performed all executions correctly, but stated he was very proud of his work.

Portrayals

Julius Streicher was played by Rolf Hoppe in the German film Comedian Harmonists. During a performance in Nuremberg, a group of Nazis begin shouting "Jews out!" to the Harmonists, prompting Streicher to shush them and requesting that the singers continue. Afterwards, Streicher invites the Comedian Harmonists to his home for a private performance, but Harry Frommermann breaks down.

References

Further reading

External links

Spiegel TV short biography (German)

Caricatures from Der Stürmer

Der Giftpilz'' ("The Poison Mushroom")

Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 12 Transcript of the testimony of Julius Streicher

Category:1885 births Category:1946 deaths Category:People from the District of Augsburg Category:German Nazi politicians Category:Members of the German Reichstag Category:Nazis who participated in the Beer Hall Putsch Category:German anti-communists Category:German military personnel of World War I Category:German people of World War II Category:German publishers (people) Category:German neopagans Category:Nazi propagandists Category:Nazi leaders Category:Gauleiter Category:Newspaper publishers (people) Category:People executed by hanging Category:People executed by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg Category:People from the Kingdom of Bavaria Category:Recipients of the Iron Cross Category:German people convicted of crimes against humanity Category:Executed German people Category:Executed Nazis Category:Holocaust perpetrators